Henry knew, certainly; and he had no doubt the "everybody" was not unjustified. He accepted the information without a pang of jealousy. "Everybody knows I'm engaged." Somehow, he would not readily have confessed to delight in the fact. Trentham he did not recall as suggestive of the ungainly biped. "Rather a decent sort of chap," thought Henry. "Not much in Flo's way, I imagine." He blinked through the remainder of the letter, never dreaming--though near to dreamtime--that Trentham was wondering what Flo could see in Henry Charles. The man who can divine just why another man loves or admires one woman, or why a woman "sees anything" in another man, has yet to be born. He was certainly neither Henry Charles nor Mr. Trentham. "Not a word from Flo about her mother," Henry reflected, on his way to bed. "Just like her--all about herself. I wonder if I'm an ass!" How unreasonable men are. Why should Flo have written about anyone but herself? It was time for Henry to wonder. But he was still wondering months later, when Trentham was not. The fact is, this Trentham was a very fair specimen of the average bull-headed Englishman, and better than most in the eyes of Miss Winton, since he enjoyed a private income, which made him quite independent of the salary attaching to his official position. His name cropped up frequently for a time in Flo's letters to Henry, but the latter scarcely referred to it in any of his replies, from which Flo judged him jealous, and when Trentham had never a mention from her, Henry supposed him circling in some other orbit. Here, of course, he was wrong, and he might have noticed a lowering temperature in the tone of Flo's epistles. There was still need to ask himself whether he was an ass, and to answer in the affirmative. But he never thought out an answer until one day it came ready-made in a fine right-hander, which took his breath away: "DEAR HENRY,--I am so sorry to tell you that I cannot continue our engagement. My affections have undergone a change, and I think it best for both of us that we should not carry out the engagement. I have promised to marry Mr. Trentham, who really thought we were never engaged. I haven't worn the ring much, as I didn't care greatly for the style of it, and now return it. I feel it is best for both of us to cease our correspondence. I shall always wish you well.--Sincerely yours, "FLO WINTON." "An ass," undoubtedly. The thing that he had often wished had happened, yet he felt chagrined, and the sense of having been wronged leaped up at him.